Transplants, like these tomatoes, do well in mostly overcast, even rainy weather for the first two or three days. Funny the way things in life can turn in an instant. One minute it’s put them in the sun, the next, welcome some cloud cover. My transplants start out under fluorescent light, a weak imitation of the sun: putting them out for a few hours, for at least two or three days, and back in to weaker light of the grow rack every night, gets them used to the sunlight. Once transplanted, though, they’ve got more to adjust to than sun. Their roots have been exposed and jostled. The nights usually get pretty cool in May, 20°F below what they’ve been used to. Maybe they sense the general vastness they’ve suddenly found themselves in, with a plant version of, “Oh my.” Whatever all is going on, it’s an adaptation. Full days of hot sun add the stress of having to pump more water into their leaves to keep from wilting. Although they’ll generally survive that sort of thing—as I’ve observed firsthand…—it’s easy to see the difference when the first few days have a good amount of cloud cover, and they really get rolling, stems thickening, the leaves turning a deep green. There are all sorts of ways, often way closer to ideal, to start seedlings indoors. For my simple, low-tech, rough-and-ready approach, this is how it seems to work!
In the photo: The little golden brown blobs scattered around are alfalfa pellets, used as fertilizer. They start of as hard pill-like cylinders, and expand to crumbly little blobs after being wet, then continue to break down as they join the soil food web.
